Summary
World Community Grid project automates tedious process to determine if protein samples are ready for x-ray examination.

Using World Community Grid, the Help Conquer Cancer project scientists have devised a way to automate and accelerate a manual, complex process that enables researchers to more easily discover the structure of cancer-related proteins, and, eventually, formulate cancer cures. This new, automated approach may also help the exploration of other diseases and food-related research.

Don't know if anyone else saw this new Project- Unfortunately there are bandwidth requirements for this project that I do not meet. I know this isn't as important a cause to everyone as the other Projects, but its still important in its own right.

28 Jun 2010

Launch of The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2

Category: The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2
Tags: Project Update

Summary
World Community Grid is pleased to launch the Linux version of The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2 (CEP2). This project is provided by the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and hopes to find promising new materials for organic solar cells.

The extensive computing power of World Community Grid will be used to help research scientists create new materials to produce more efficient and inexpensive solar cells that will serve as viable energy sources for the world’s future needs.

CEP2 is performing electronic structure calculations: To obtain more accurate optical, electronic and other physical properties of the candidate solar materials, quantum mechanics calculations are being performed for each of the candidates. These calculations will be performed with the Q-Chem quantum chemistry software, developed by Q-Chem, Inc. This work will result in a useful database of information about the properties of a large number of compounds. This project will also provide direct input to experimental groups to aid in their design of improved solar cells.

For additional information on this project, please press the Research button in the upper navigation bar or click here.

Action Required to Participate in CEP2

Unlike most of our other projects, we will not automatically opt anyone into CEP2. This is because CEP2 uses code that, like other World Community Grid projects, is very computationally intensive, but unlike other World Community Grid projects, it is also very data intensive. Members will have to go to their My Projects page and elect to participate in this project.

At launch time, work units are only available for Linux users. Work units for Mac and Windows users are currently scheduled to be released prior to July 17, 2010. Additionally, the distribution of work units is limited to computers that have upload and download speeds of 1 Mbps or higher.

The CPU impact of this on computers is anticipated to be similar to other projects running on World Community Grid because the computer resource requirements for CEP2 are similar to that of FightAIDS@Home and HPF2. However, CEP2 requires a considerable amount of input and output data. The initial download required for this project is around 160MB and each work unit download is around 1MB. The results for a single work unit can be around 50MB, which is about 500 times larger than a typical FightAIDS@Home result. A 756kbps network connection would take approximately 12-15 minutes to download the work unit. At this time, there are no alternative solutions to overcome this issue.

Medical significance of the development of allosteric inhibitors
By systematically modifying, extending, combining, and characterizing the fragments that bind
well to the exo sites of the new crystallographic conformations of HIV protease from Associate
Professor C. David Stout!s lab at TSRI, we will advance the development of larger, higheraffinity
compounds that can bind to these allosteric sites and stabilize the drug-bound
conformations of protease, which have closed flaps. These flaps (a) control access to the active
site, and (b) must fully open, close, and then open again in order for HIV protease to perform the
chemical work required to produce viral particles capable of infecting new cells. As
hypothesized from the results of Dr. Alex Perryman!s previous Molecular Dynamics simulations,
a large enough allosteric ligand could restrict compression of the peripheral surface of HIV
protease, thereby inhibiting the flaps from opening, which would block protease activity via a
completely novel mechanism. Similarly, such ligands could also facilitate closing of the flaps,
which means they could potentially help restore the potencies of the current FDA-approved HIV
protease drugs against the multi-drug-resistant mutant “super bugs” that are becoming
increasingly prevalent in AIDS patients. In addition, these allosteric inhibitors might also have
the potential to impede the evolution of new multi-drug-resistant mutant superbugs. A
combination of an allosteric inhibitor and an active site inhibitor has been shown to
suppress the emergence of drug-resistant mutants in one type of cancer. Similarly, by
advancing the development of combinations of active site drugs and allosteric inhibitors, we
might be able to “corner” HIV in sequence space, such that it cannot mutate in new ways that
allow it to both escape all of the drugs and still perform catalysis efficiently. These ideas
represent the foundation of our current virtual screening efforts

Don't know if this was mentioned in the team thread (Im a little behind there), but when looking at my Project Manager there was a new WU I had not seen (if you have the box to automatically opt in checked, then you are already in and are receiving WUs, if not and you want to add it do so via your project manager on WCG.com)

The mission of Computing for Clean Water is to provide deeper insight on the molecular scale into the origins of the efficient flow of water through a novel class of filter materials. This insight will in turn guide future development of low-cost and more efficient water filters.

I was reading about it on WCG.com, saw that part of the research is on carbon nanotubes which I thought was interesting.

The WUs so far are only taking about 2hrs to complete on my i7, so its a nice quick WU. Maybe someone can check their results and see if they have similar times so we can see if this is like the Rice project where all the WUs were 6hrs long no matter the CPU, or if this is dependent on CPU speed.

Summary
World Community Grid project automates tedious process to determine if protein samples are ready for x-ray examination.

Using World Community Grid, the Help Conquer Cancer project scientists have devised a way to automate and accelerate a manual, complex process that enables researchers to more easily discover the structure of cancer-related proteins, and, eventually, formulate cancer cures. This new, automated approach may also help the exploration of other diseases and food-related research.

Thanks for the link. I am glad to see proof that all of the work put into this project by the Techpowerup! team and all the other teams in WCG is being realized. It makes me proud to say that I am part of the fight to defeat cancer

We are pleased to inform you that World Community Grid has launched a brand new project called Computing for Clean Water. In addition, new work units for the Help Fight Childhood Cancer project are being released.

Computing for Clean Water: Lack of access to clean water is one of the major humanitarian challenges for many regions in the developing world. It is estimated that 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion have little or no sanitation. World Community Grid and researchers at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China are working together to understand the molecular scale properties of a new class of efficient and inexpensive water filter materials, which may help to satisfy demand for cheap, clean drinking water in developing countries.

For more information about this exciting project, please go to our Research section here or view the press release here.

Help Fight Childhood Cancer: The initial computations have identified promising drug candidates and the research scientists have identified three additional targets they would like the World Community Grid volunteers to process.

For a personal message from the research scientist, Dr. Akira Nakagawara, please go to our Forum section here.

News & Updates: For more late breaking news about World Community Grid, please check out the News & Updates section on the website. Click Here!

Your last result was returned on September 24, 2010. We need all the computing power available for this critical research. If you are no longer contributing, you may download the software again here.

You may check to see if you are set up to receive work for these projects by clicking here.

World Community Grid is excited to announce its partnership with People for a Smarter Planet, a network of communities sponsored by IBM that lets people make meaningful, personal contributions towards building a smarter planet.

The charter of People for a Smarter Planet is to use crowdsourced knowledge to address some of the planet's biggest problems. Our mission aligns perfectly with this charter, so we are proud to become one of the founding members of People for a Smarter Planet.

Joining People for a Smarter Planet also means that we will be benefiting from its social outreach efforts, which will help increase our ranks. In turn, this means World Community Grid can donate even more free computer power to new research projects, and complete existing projects faster.

Ultimately, we would like to become the largest supercomputer in the world, dedicated to solving problems that can benefit all of humanity. With your continued help and the additional visibility we will receive from this partnership, that goal is within reach.

Please show your support by visiting the People for a Smarter Planet Facebook page, clicking the Like button, and sharing the news with your friends. On this page, you can also learn about our sister communities and submit ideas for new activities that can help us build a smarter planet.

I have plenty of c4cw tasks in the cue for all of my rigs and I'm running 100%. What I have noticed is that several of my rigs have 'Ready to report' status on several completed tasks and in the Messages tab I have that message. At least I'm ok for several hours.

World Community Grid is pleased to inform you that the Windows and Mac versions of The Clean Energy Project - Phase 2 were deployed on November 8, 2010.

This means that if you have a Windows or Mac computer, you may now contribute the unused cycles of that computer toward research that is designed to find more efficient methods of harvesting solar energy.

The Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, is the sponsor of this project. For additional information, please click here.

We would also like to mention that a significant milestone was recently achieved. As a result of your contribution, and the contributions of all World Community Grid volunteers, more than 400,000 years of computer run time have been donated to advance research on critical humanitarian issues. For more information about this milestone, click here.

There are currently a total of 8 research projects running on World Community Grid and all of them need your help. It's easy, free, and secure to provide computing power to these important projects. Learn more about these projects and their accomplishments here.

Click here to see which research projects you have selected to receive work from.

We will be updating the DB2 software to latest fixpack level on December 2nd from 14:00 UTC until 17:00 UTC. Much of this time will result in the website being unavailable. The distribution of workunits and receipt of results by the BOINC environment will be unaffected.

The first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition will air next week. The contest is between two of the most celebrated Jeopardy! Champions -- Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings -- playing against IBM's 'Watson' computing system. The grand prize for this competition will be $1 million, with second place earning $300,000, and third place earning $200,000.

IBM will be donating 100% of 'Watson's' winnings to charity, with 50% of those winnings going to World Vision and 50% going to World Community Grid!

To read the full article and access the press release, please go to the News & Updates article.

In advance of the Jeopardy! special, the USA based Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will be showing a NOVA segment on February 9, 2011, entitled Smartest Machine on Earth. For more information about this NOVA special please click here.

If you are unfamiliar with the Jeopardy! game show, please go to the Jeopardy! website. This site also provides you with a chance to vote for your favorite contestant. There is also information on Facebook.

Please tune in to watch this special competition, and cheer 'Watson' on! It will be airing over three days -- February 14, 15, and 16, 2011. Please check your local listings for channel and air times.